Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2663 actions· ✨ 89 recent

The Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA, Subtitle B Part I of Pub. L. 115-232, the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for FY2019, signed 13 August 2018 by President Trump, codified at 50 U.S.C. §§ 4801–4852) provides permanent statutory authority for the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), replacing the long-lapsed Export Administration Act of 1979 and resolving a decades-long gap in which the EAR operated on emergency authority alone. ECRA is the foundational parent statute of the modern US dual-use export-control regime: it authorises the Commerce Control List, the Entity List, the Unverified List, the Military End-User (MEU) List, the Foreign Direct Product Rule (FDPR), the emerging-and-foundational technology control framework (§1758), and BIS enforcement and civil/criminal penalty authority — the entire regulatory toolkit under which every BIS-administered export-control action filed in the IPTM register derives its legal authority. ECRA also codified ongoing US participation in the multilateral export-control regimes (Wassenaar, NSG, MTCR, Australia Group) and created the interagency Technology Alert List process.

South Africa's Precious Metals Act 37 of 2005 establishes a standing, discretionary ministerial export-approval regime for platinum group metals. Section 12(2) provides that "no person may export any unwrought or semi-fabricated metals of the platinum group except with the written approval of the Minister which shall be granted subject to the promotion of equitable access to, and the orderly local beneficiation of such metals." The Act was assented to and published in the Government Gazette on 21 April 2006 (Act 37 of 2005) and commenced on 1 July 2007 per Presidential proclamation under s.25 (Government Gazette 30071 of 12 July 2007). South Africa supplies roughly 70-80% of global mined platinum, rhodium and iridium output, making this the register's first PGM-specific ZA export instrument (prior ZA filings — MPRDA 2002, the 2025 Mineral Resources Development Bill, IDS 2026 — are generic mining-law/industrial-policy instruments rather than PGM-specific export controls).